Tuesday, September 25, 2012

The Jesus And Mary Chain - Psychocandy

This is just one of those albums where my expectations for the style of the album were not what I expected. And in this case hoped. Psychocandy is a pretty downtempo dream pop album when you take away the layers of distorted guitars. I was hoping the sound would evolve and maybe get louder and more agressive as the album went on, but that was not so much the case. It was content to slowjam, but I was not so much. There are a few tracks on here that do excel, but not enough for me to warrant a recommendation.

Calories: 242.0
Distance: 2.00mi


Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Andrew Cedarmark - Moon Deluxe

I have once again returned to this medium of communication. My life has changed severely over the past few weeks, which is my excuse for not working out. My workout environment is now completely different. I now workout in a public fitness center on campus. I've decided the only way I'm going to motivate myself to workout is by doing it early in the morning, before class.

Unfortunately, with this comes a change in the way I listen to the music. Before, I could just blast my tunes on my studio monitors in privacy. Now that I'm in public, this is obviously not socially acceptable. As working out with my expensive headphones would cause more harm than good, I'm using to mid-to-low tier headphones that are lightweight and non-obtrusive. This means my critiques of the sonic aspect have to be shifted down as well, because I'm not getting that full effect of the track. So, still take my reviews with a grain of salt, and see them as more personal experiences than anything. So, where do I begin?

Moon Deluxe is an indie rock album with some very well executed, and sometimes heavy, sequences of lo-fi. It bears quite a resemblance to the more rock-oriented tracks Phil Elverum has put out under The Microphones, but this is certainly not a bad thing. Eleverum is really the only other person occupying that same type of folky lo-fi. It jams harder than than Elverum ever really has as well, which lead me to enjoy this album quite a bit. It keeps up it's more uptempo rhythms throughout, but never becomes overly noisy or too abrasive. Provided a enjoyable return to workouts. Definitely check it out.

Calories: 315.0
Distance: 2.64mi